The American Recolution Considered as a Social Movement

A detailed Summary of The American Recolution Considered as a Social Movement

"The Effects of the American Revolution"

J. Franklin Jameson's book, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement, explains how our revolution was more than a war for political change to democracy. The revolution caused a social movement in addition to the political purpose of it. This social movement caused many changes in America, changes that far exceeded a switch to a democracy.

First, Jameson said that the war affected American society by changing the status of persons. During the war, the Continental Congress of 1774 had stopped the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. They made a non-importation agreement which said, "We will neither import nor purchase and slave imported after the first day of December next, after which we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, or will we hire our vessels nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it". The terms of this agreement were carried out and throughout the war, it was followed.

Jameson said that slavery was ended in much of the US by the war, and abolishment of slavery became a political force. Pennsylvania made an act in which slavery would be abolished gradually which said that no

The final effect of the social revolution, Jameson said, was the overthrow of old-fashioned customs that existed in the land laws. The two particular customs he mentioned were strict entails (a landholder could not sell his land or even give it away), and that of primogeniture. Primogeniture means if the father made no will, all his land would be turned over to his oldest son, with no land being given to any of the other children. In Jameson's eyes, no means were better for keeping a land-holding aristocracy, and primogeniture was eliminated as a result of the social revolution because the United States wanted to be as far from the aristocracy as possible. When the revolution first broke out, Pennsylvania and Maryland readily abolished primogeniture, and South Carolina abolished entails. Although, in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, entails and primogeniture were still in effect. Virginian entails were stricter than the English ones, and all the New England colonies had a rule of democratic distribution, and did not want to cut away from their old English ways. New England had decided that all the children inherit the same amount of land, but the eldest son would get double his share. Within ten years of the Declaration of Independence, every state had abolished their entails except for two, but those states very rarely were subject to these entails. In fifteen years, every state abolished primogeniture and gave equal inheritance.

A third point of Jameson's about the effects of a social revolution was that of quit-rents. I

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Approximate Word count = 1062
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History